A new poll released on Friday finds that New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, holds a lead of 15 percentage points over her Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin.
The Emerson College-Pix11-The Hill survey found that 50 percent of somewhat and very likely voters polled said they would support Hochul when asked who they would vote for if the election for governor was held today. Zeldin, meanwhile, received 35 percent.
Nine percent of voters said they were undecided, while six percent said they would be voting for someone else. The polling also showed Hochul holding an edge over Zeldin with Black and Hispanic voters.
Hochul is seeking her first full term in office after she was elevated to the position last year following then-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation in the wake of sexual harassment allegations against him.
A previous poll released last week showed that Zeldin had cut Hochul’s lead down to single digits, after previous polls showed her leading by double digits.
The joint poll conducted by the Trafalgar Group and InsiderAdvantage showed Hochul below 50% in the upcoming gubernatorial election, with 47.8% of the vote. Zeldin received 43.4% of the vote in the poll, 4.4 points behind the incumbent.
Former President Donald Trump has appeared to throw his weight behind Zeldin, attending a fundraiser earlier this week for the Republican candidate, The Hill noted Friday. Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who served in that post during Trump’s term in office, recently expressed support for Zeldin, saying that "it's now or never”.
Zeldin, the co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus and one of only two Jewish Republicans in Congress, last week denounced mounting antisemitism experienced by Jews in New York.
Zeldin was the target of an antisemitic death threat in late June.
In July, he was attacked following an upstate campaign event and escaped unharmed. The accused attacker, David Jakubonis, later claimed he had been drinking that day and didn’t know who the congressman was.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)